Instant analysis of the chemical composition and metabolites of individual neurons.

Recently, Huang Guangming, a professor at the School of Chemistry and Materials Science at the University of Science and Technology of China, and Xiong Wei, a professor at the School of Life Sciences, worked closely together to conduct rapid mass spectrometry of a variety of chemical components on individual neurons in the mouse brain based on a self-developed single-cell electrophysiology and mass spectrometry platform, and to simultaneously collect electrophysiological signals, successfully completing the study of neuron function, metabolite composition and its metabolic path.
research, conducted online February 21 in the international academic journal PNAS, is based on the research by Single-Neuron Category Of Chemical, Physian Changes, and And Metabolism Using Mass Spectrometry.
nerve cells in the brain are highly diverse in cell morphology, synactal connections, cell structure, electrophysiology, and physiological functions.
different kinds of nerve cells, their chemical molecular composition, content, metabolism are also very different.
, the analysis of the chemical composition of individual neurons in the brain has important biological value.
mass spectrometrometography is gradually used in single-cell cell metabolic analysis because of its high sensitivity, large linear range and high-volume analysis of chemical molecules.
The current method requires the use of a large number of organic reagents to process cells, unable to maintain cell activity during sampling, lengthy processing and separation processes also lead to slower analysis speed, can not complete a large number of single-cell analysis in a short period of time, and lack of electrophysiological signals from the same cell, resulting in single-cell metabolites mass spectrometry analysis can not be used for large-scale analysis of nerve cells.
In recent years, China University of Science and Technology Huang Guangming Laboratory has worked closely with Xiong Wei Laboratory to develop in-place mass spectrometry methods that can be used in complex samples, greatly improving the speed of analysis, and recently achieved direct analysis of in-cell proteins (Angew.Chem.Int.Ed.2011,50:2503; Angew.Chem.Int.Ed.2011, 50:9907; Anal.Chem.2016, 88:10860), and the functional identification and analysis of individual neurons in the brains of mice were carried out by electrophysiological diaphragm pliers (Nat.Chem.Biol., 2011; J.Exp.Med., 2012; Nat.Neurosci., 2014).
these studies provide an important basis for high-volume mass spectrometrometrometromety, metabolite identification, and metabolic path-path study of individual nerve cells.
This work enables the immediate analysis of the chemical composition and metabolites of individual neurons, and the technology pushes the current research on the analysis of nerve cell composition to a living cell and single cell level, and is expected to study neurobiology, metabolomics, toxicology at the single-cell level. Such major issues in life science, with very important application prospects, have been the Ministry of Science and Technology, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Chinese Academy of Sciences pilot special and the National Youth Program and other funding, as well as china University of Science and Technology National Synchred Radiation Laboratory photoelectrometic mass spectrometrometrometromet line station equipment and technical support.
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